Lightly rainy dark early morning. 🙂

Going for two days in a row in the park. 💪🏻

(Morning CoSo!)

#BetterWorldsTheory

Today's newsletter touches on the latest SFF Twitter nonsense, to make a bigger comment about the danger of assuming that our proximity to literature makes us more enlightened and kinder critters.

We have to make choices to lean into better systems all the time.

Whether we're up for that challenge... well, only time will tell.

#WritingCommunity #Writing #WritersOfCoSo #SFF https://mlclark.substack.com/p/will-literary-communities-save-us

And lastly... some morning boob. #Graffiti

Have a lovely one, all.

Bonus horse-friends.
#ThatGrazingLife

Proper reset in the park. 😊

(Morning, CoSo!)

Thanks for the kind words, folks. Hope your Mondays were lovely.

Rotten luck stuck with me today - something I ate left me very sick, & I still have a headache from trying to keep hydrated while the body went full Exorcist.

But they're called 24-hour-bugs for a reason, right? 🙃

Off to bed after the newsletter. (Lit Twit drama for you soon!) I am aching for a pre-dawn run.

After the novel's in my agent's hands, I have a lot to think through... but one thing at a time.

Night, CoSo. 🌜Be well.

Today's review of #StrangeNewWorlds for #OnlySky is a little harder on the show than my last.

It had to be, because although the SNW team had a huge challenge when setting out to tackle Trek canon around justice and genetic modification, they took some narrative shortcuts that unfortunately undermined the biggest humanist issues this trial of an episode broached.

But! We can learn from setback, too. (If we didn't, we wouldn't be human, would we?) #StarTrek #SFF 🖖
https://onlysky.media/mclark/ad-astra-per-aspera-how-we-escape-from-hardship-into-wonder/

This hasn't been my strongest month.

Tomorrow should make for a nice reset, but I have to scale back expectations. I tried to complete far too much in June, and everything fared worse for the scramble.

So.

We regroup.

We assess what went wrong, and what could've gone better.

We see what we can *do* better, one step at a time.

And we accept that this has been a really tough year.

I don't what happens next.

Except that tomorrow, at my usual 4am start, we press on.

Have a kind one, CoSo. 💙

All right. I fumed. I paced. I talked with people in my neighbourhood who make me feel safe. And I talked to administration.

My home feels a little bit set to rights again.

Thanks all for your presence with the whirlwind. 💛 Back to work with me!

AND HE WAS WAITING WHEN I GOT BACK. HANGING AROUND THE FRONT AND JOGGING IN AFTER ME.

UNBELIEVABLE.

Tried to rush into my elevator too.

I of course *left* it.

I am furious.

Going to watch The Bear while cooling down.

Hope everyone else's Sundays are going better. So help me, mine *will* improve. 😑

I didn't even get out of the building today before a drunken neighbour cornered me, thinking me a tourist, and made me have to get very loud before he let go of my wrist.

There was a huge fútbol event yesterday and some folks are just coming back home now but whew. Not okay. Never an excuse. I am having a bit of a rough time keeping an even keel these days and this ain't helping.

Breathing out. Walking. Buying veg for today's meal. Starting over when I return.

This has been the year of putting together and publishing work that carried my sense of self and purpose for years. Having it out in the world allows me to pack up an era and make other choices if I need to. That's why I've been so melancholy as of late. I keep dreaming of walking away. (But, still have one last novel series to try with the agent! So, not over yet.) #AmWriting

But!

I am taking his surprise and willingness to recognize a knowledge gap as a small win. I also readily agreed with all the points he thinks are deep conspiracies - yes, the West has had CIA presence in Europe for decades. Everyone knows that. Not secret tankie knowledge!

So we'll see if bit by bit a loving dismantling of his silos' BS can finally break through. (& I ended as I always do, with gentle reminders that he is more than the ID these groups want members to believe is everything.)

Welp.

I gave it another go with my tankie in the family. Started on Russian incompetence, but then he cycled back to his usual Zelenskyy hate-on, & I pushed against the incoherence of having no empathy for Z while also claiming the West is behind everything. Learned he believed Z to be a CIA plant. Pointed him to the preceding leader. He was stunned. His silos hadn't mentioned the prior leader already being West-leaning.

*Easily* *Fact-checked* *Claims*.

Radicalism has zero interest in truth.

I've been following recent events amid my weekend tasks - just not commenting on them yet.

Friendly reminder that these extremely intense times live in our bodies.

Stay informed. Think big picture. Consider where best you can give aid.

But keep health and wellness in mind, too.

The rush, the anticipation, the highs and lows of every new crumb of breaking intel...

Is it leaving you a better actor, or winding you up & burning you out?

Hydrate. Hug a loved one. Touch grass.

Return renewed.

Big feelings as I finish the short story collection, which is also the closest I've come to memoir: each piece preceded by a two-pager on original publishing context; all reminding me what I was wrestling with while trying to imagine better.

I had a decent run. Not the best, but not the worst.

(More in the next newsletter. I have a review to finish next.)

#WritingLife #Indie #IndiePublishing #WritingCommunity #SFF

This has already been a Two Cry Day.

Body is being weird. Between book prep, I hugged friends today! I said hello to the flowers and all the native bees! I ate! And hydrated! I let the soft animal of my body love what it loves and told it the world opens itself to its imagination!

Meat sack! Fleeting pile of future stardust!
What more do you want from me? 🤨

I guess I'll just have to say hello and good job to more flowers. Going for a walk 'til the mind / apartment cools a bit.

Silly brains.

#AI #Writing #SocialMedia #Technology

A thoughtful essay by Rob Horning on how tech companies view human processing as mere impediment to output:

"As with Facebook’s data collection on material before it was posted, AI-assistance intervenes before you’ve finished thinking your way through something and claims it as significant data. The documents aren’t ever really blank; they are always wired for microsecond-by-microsecond surveillance of your interactions with them."

https://robhorning.substack.com/p/endless-feedback